“Hi Rob,” Green replied.
“Remember we arrested a guy at Halloween, last Halloween, thirteen months ago, and you said he looked like a Parisian rapist?”
“Yeah. One of the world’s last remaining Geoffrey’s. Goes by the name GC.”
Lindleman reached his spare arm out in victory. “We get DNA on him for that?”
“Yep, full works, spent a couple of months inside.”
Sharma now also waved her arms in victory. “All the attackers spat all over the victims, we’ve got all their DNA!”
“Yes, we have” Lindleman added waving more.
“Job done, probably.”
“Thanks Green,” Rob said remembering he was still actually on the phone.
“No problem pardners!”
“You are not a cowboy,” Lindleman ended the call.
Sharma started laughing, “it’s a good thing the racists prone to violence are the stupid ones who keep walking into getting arrested. When one of the intelligent racists decides to hurt somebody, we’ll have a challenge.”
“Are there intelligent racists?” Lindleman asked.
“Oh Rob, yes there are, that’s where the real danger starts.”
“Did you fucking see their faces?” a young man sneered and laughed. He was walking in a small group of people all around his age, all white, and they had had quite an evening.
“The way they curled on the floor like babies,” another one replied, picturing the Indian couple they had beaten and feeling proud of their shouts of pain.
“That’ll make the fuckers go home,” a woman in their group added.
One had been drinking out of a beer can, but now it was empty he threw it over his shoulder to land where it may.
“Hey, hey,” another one of the women said, “look over there!”
They looked up the street, to find an Indian woman walking slowly along. She was elderly, well beyond retirement, and she had a dog that seemed equally old waddling alongside her.
“Oh yeah, let’s give her the English treatment as well,” one man sneered, and the group steered a course so they could surround the woman. When they had her trapped, they started jeering and spitting, calling her every name they could think of.
Nervous looks from side to side, panic on her face, the dog walker was bewildered by the abuse shouted at her. “Please, take my purse,” she said thinking she was being robbed by the group.
Then someone else said “stop that!” The white attackers turned, to a newcomer who had shouted it at them. Only that newcomer wasn’t on their own. Twenty young Indian men and women stood in the street, all with fists bunched.
“Fuck off!” a white lad shouted, with obvious fear.
“Gonna beat an old lady up?” the newcomer shouted as his group marched forward like an all-consuming wave. “Why don’t you try that on us!”
“Now steady on,” a white attacker complained, as one of the rescuers threw a punch which connected with the side of his head.
“Stop, stop!” the white group cried as they shied away, arms round their heads, as the rescuers laid into them with revenge fuelled anger. The one-sided fight continued for a little while, until the old woman ordered “leave them, leave them children,” and the rescuers pulled back and let the white youths run away, their faces bloodied by the conflict.
“You okay?” someone asked the old woman.
“Yes, yes I’m good. Thank you.”
“Yeah, look, don’t go out on your own again. We’ll give you some numbers to call if you wanna go out, and someone will bring a crew round and we’ll go with you, right?”
“Yeah we’ll come with you when you walk him, her, him, the dog.”
“We’re gonna band together, that’s what we’re gonna do.”
The old lady nodded, “thank you, will you walk me home?”
“That we will.”
The dog, which seemed to only just realise what had happened, barked as if in approval.
There was an ever so gentle knocking at the door, which the mayor almost missed. He was sat in the kitchen having some toast, so he put down a meat paste covered knife and went to see his visitor.
It was the PI.
“I have come to start work,” the detective told him, and once again walked into the house without being asked.
“You didn’t start last night?” Dobbs asked.
“Last night was data gathering. We got the questions out of the way, I’ve had a recharge, and now we can work. So…”
“You’re going to brush the letter for fingerprints and then look them up on a database?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I know who to contact if I want access to the computers of Morthern Police, but that’s not what we’re going to do here. We’ll start from a more accessible and cheaper start point.”
“Which is?”
“Your extra-legal dealings are all conducted on one laptop, right?”
“Yes.”
“The obvious place for a leak at your end is the laptop. That’s not to say people don’t talk, but we start by ruling you out. So, put it on the table.”
The mayor did as he was instructed, and the PI started tapping away.
“Don’t you need to know my password?”
The PI looked up with a calm smile, “I’ve worked it out.”
“So, what are we looking for?”
“I,” he stressed, “will begin by looking at access points which have been cut into this software by something you’ve done.”
“But I…”
“You only have to screw up once and they can get something on it. So how about you make me a cup of tea and I will proceed.”
“Okay, I have some.”
“And biscuits. For dipping.” The PI continued his work but took a glance to his left where Dobbs was. Ever since he’d started with a fortnight in technical support as work experience, he’d known the widespread curiosity of tech staff. Someone in that team had built a dock which automatically copied off all the music and photographs to a private drive, which was both a complete abuse of trust and a salutary life lesson for a fourteen-year-old in the way data was left wide open. Which was why he had learned where to find that data, in all its glorious forms, and how to gain access and then manipulate it. The mayor’s problem boiled down to a data leak: someone knew something they didn’t. So, where had that data been accessed?
Anyone could have spoken of course. Many PI’s would be speaking to people instead of sitting here, but the future was here too.
“I’ve got a breakfast tea?” Dobbs asked.
“Very well. What biscuits do you have?”
“I might not be able to supply those, I’m not sure.”
“Work might be slow then.”
“I’ll find some!”
Dobbs looked around his kitchen. He so wanted to know who was after him, because you couldn’t co-ordinate a response without a target. This PI was the best person he knew for the job, but he was also deeply eccentric, which he supposed went with the former. So, he really needed to get some biscuits…
Cupboards were opened, drawers were too, even the bread bin was checked until there, like the holy grail in the ruins of Tintagel, was an unopened pack of bourbons which had been pushed to the back.
Of course, when Dobbs checked them, they were four months out of date, but the mayor wasn’t going to have any himself, so he just poured a bundle onto a plate and put that down in front of the PI. Then he asked, “how did you get into this line of work?”
“I don’t want to have a conversation.”
“I guess you can’t really train for it, no degrees in private investigations.”
“I refer you to my previous answer.”
“I suppose you could start in the police and…” but Dobbs stopped because the PI had picked up a bourbon and poked it towards the mayor while mouthing ‘stop’. Then the PI ate the bourbon, chewed for a while, looked suspiciously at Dobbs, and finally carried on.
“Anything?”
“Yes,” the PI said, “I’m just checking some third-party details.”
“How do you mean?”
The PI cracked his knuckles and ate another biscuit before explaining. “Someone had been able to install a tiny piece of software onto your system, whether by having physical access to this laptop or fooling you into doing it for them. The latter is most likely.”
“I’m not a fool.”
“You don’t have to be, but the software has let people read what’s on your machine. The people who did this know everything.”
“Oh my god. Who? Who!”
“Here’s the thing. The creator focused on getting information off, and to do that the machine communicates with a dedicated server, but it’s not private enough, not private like I would set it up, because I can locate it for you. The server belongs to Rupert Hume. I assume that means something to you?”
“Oh yes. Yes, it really does. I’m sunk if he knows everything.”
“No, you’re not.”
“How?”
“Hume’s tech people got software onto your machine, but they’re not what we would call experts. They are not competent hackers, because once you have a link into this server, as you and I now do, they’ve left the doors open and we can poke around it. They screwed up and I have just downloaded a chunk of Hume’s secret data for you…”
“What?”
“Whatever he’s blackmailing you for, I would bet everything he’s got similarly damning information on his machine and now yours.”
“I love you,” Dobbs exclaimed.
The PI widened his eyes but continued “obviously my fee has gone up a great deal, but I’m sure you had anticipated that. Now, I am going to clean your machine up and get it safe to use again, and then I am going to talk you through web security in as patronising a manner as needed to get through to you not to open dodgy stuff sent by con-men.”
“Hello sir, how can I help you this morning?”
It was early, but the man smelt a sale. When he started his career, he took it as a personal slight if someone left the car showroom without having made a purchase, but now he knew these were high-end vehicles and only a tiny fraction of the customers, were doing anything other than window shopping their dream cars. But the salesman had a little bit of a sixth sense, and he knew this man was serious. It wasn’t the clothes; it was the way he looked and acted. A mixture of confidence and curiosity.
“Hi there,” Howard Welb replied, “this is going to be the easiest thing you do all day.”
“Oh?”
“I want a new car, and I want one of these Ferraris. No need to sell, no need to finesse, I am here to buy. All we need to discuss is what’s the best thing you can get me in the shortest time, if you see what I mean.”
“Well I love that approach.”
“Also, no need for finance, I am a cash buyer.”
The salesman nodded. That wasn’t perfect because he was on commission for selling a payment plan but… cash buyer who wanted to drive right off the lot. Couldn’t look that gift horse in the… he couldn’t remember the ending, he smelt money.
“Very impressive, business must be doing well?”
Welb nodded. He probably shouldn’t bore the salesman to death with the economics, how his hate-for-profit approach to Morthern.Info meant he was rolling in cash and now it was time to dive a little bit into his childhood dreams and get himself a Ferrari.
“If money is no object…” the salesman began.
He didn’t get to finish because Welb replied, “it isn’t.”
“And you want it now. We could get you one of these machines tomorrow. We’d have a man drive it over, through the night if needed, and you’d be able to drive it off at 7am tomorrow. How does that sound?”
“Perfect. What colour?”
“Well, you would have to pick from what we can get hold of, that’s the downside, but we’ve got the whole of Britain to look over to find one… if you know what I mean.”
Welb was impressed. They’d ring round the dealers, get a flunky to drive the right car and he could take it tomorrow.
Well it wasn’t a decision was it. “Yes, I’ll definitely go for that. Give me the colour choice and I’ll pick…”
“May I recommend red?”
“Oh, yeah, good point, red it is.” A red Ferrari, on his drive, and he’d done nothing but poison people on a website and take the advertising money. Could life get any better? Even so, a Ferrari, he’d better get home soon and post a few bangers up. What were the mayoral elections doings? And didn’t some Asian kids beat someone up last night? Perfect.
“So, you don’t bet on horses?” one of the receptionists asked the other.
“No, no of course not. Horse racing is like the opposite of sex.”
“I… okay explain that.”
“Horse racing is who can do that quickest, but I wanna take my time riding, go around the whole course a couple of times.”
“… how exactly did you get this job?”
“I filled in an online form I saw…”
“That is totally not what I meant.”
“Well what do you think?”
“I am not getting involved in this metaphor or analogy or whatever the fuck this is.”
In front of them, the door to the police station opened, so the two men on reception looked up.
“Oh boy,” one uttered.
A group of young people came into the station. If you wanted to profile them, you’d notice all were white, a mixture of male and female, all dressed in the same style, and all coming over as one to the counter. One man emerged at the front, his hair cut tight, and he leaned over to talk.
“I wanna make a complaint.”
“Aye,” said a fellow.
“Yeah, we wanna make a complaint,” he tried again.
“Very well, what’s it about?”
“We got attacked.”
“That sounds serious.”
“Yeah, yeah, this big gang of Indians, like from the east Indians, they surrounded us and shoved us all about. They hit me, here, look at me, look at my face.” There was indeed a large purple bruise on the youth’s cheek.
“Okay,” a receptionist said “what we would do is take statements from you and anyone who witnessed this…”
“We all did, all of us, we all witnessed, they surrounded us, tried to beat the shit out of us.”
“But we ran,” one interrupted.
“We managed to retreat like,” one corrected. “They didn’t chase us, we fooled them.”
“Okay, so as I was saying, we will call for one of our officers to speak to you about this and they will take statements. They didn’t try and rob you or anything?”
“They called us crackers,” the youth leered, “racist innit, they racists.”
“In that case we treat it as a hate crime, so I will call one of our Major Crimes Unit officers to speak to you and will investigate it as a hate crime.”
“Great, great, me and the boys will sit over here.” Didn’t seem to matter they had women with them, the group went over to a row of seats.
“Can I take a name?”
“GC,” the lead youth called back.
“Ideally not initials.”
“Err… Geoffrey, Geoffrey Cobb.”
“Thank you, Mr Cobb, I will ring up to our detectives.”
“Hi Grayling,” Lindleman said waving as his colleague walked into the Bunker.
“While I’m sure you have a genuine love in your heart for me Rob, I suspect you’re actually up to something.”
“Oh yes, of course. So, met any nice elves recently?”
“Oh, here we go.”
“Cos, I figure if you like fantasy and Tolkien and all that stuff, you probably have a team of elves you hang out with.”
“A team… of elves?”
“Yeah, elves, yunno with the pointy ears.”
“You know ears aren’t real right. I mean e
lves, elves aren’t real. I can’t hang out with elves.”
“Yeah you can, it’ll be like a gathering of twinks, just speaking a silly language.”
Grayling went on the offensive. “And science fiction, right. Science fiction. No silly people or languages there… oh yeah Klingons. Pasty foreheads and people getting degrees in speaking it.”
“Oh, right, low hanging fruit. Let’s bash the Klingons. Did I do that to you? No, no I did not do the obvious, cheap target, I went for quality.”
Grayling crossed her arms. “And what’s the low hanging fantasy fruit?”
“Orcs.”
“Orcs?”
“Orcs, who are simply racist caricatures of western misbeliefs about Africans. How many black guys are there in fantasy? How many suspicious tribal dog-whistles are there? We’re doing hate crimes, we need to ring up J R R Tolkien, and not just cos George Martin stole his R R.”
“I do not know how to reply to that.” The phone rang. “That’s lucky.”
Lindleman picked it up. “Hi, DC Lindleman. No, no, DC Grayling isn’t here at the moment,” he stuck a thumbs up at Rebecca, “so can I pass a message on?” He listened. “Shit off my fucking cock. Yeah, okay, sorry, HR issue. Yeah, I’ll get a message right to her.”
He slammed the phone down and looked at Grayling, eyes wide.
“Why do you look like a mad puppy?”
“Someone just came into the station to report a hate crime.”
“Oh great, another one. This place is collapsing into civil war.”
“Geoffrey Cobb.”
“F off.”
“Geoffrey ‘GC’ Cobb and his entire posse of white supremacists have marched into reception and tried to report the Indian community for attacking them.”
“F. F me.”
“You have one too few cocks.”
“They actually, walked in here? Oh, this is going to be good.”
“So, Detective Constable, what’s your plan?”
“Obviously being a consummate professional I will take a full statement from the gang, and then I will arrest all the fuckers, get them charged with the attacks, and absolutely piss myself shortly after.”
“You should let us join the party. Maruma better not get all the fun.”
“When they leave, I shall call you; all of us will be needed. MCU group outing to the reception of this station and then to the cells.”
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